A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

Explores the origins of Europe in the context of Ancient Greek history

Seamlessly integrates and relates the cultural, political, and social history of Greece from 1200 BCE to the Persian wars of the early fifth century BCE

Meier is one of the most internationally-recognized and highly-regarded ancient historians writing today

A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

Description

Christian Meier is one of Europe's preeminent authorities on the classical world. A Culture of Freedom marks the apex of his lifelong research on ancient Greek culture. Beginning with a section on medieval and modern Europe's enormous inheritance of Greek institutions and ideas, the book moves on to chronicle the rise of Greek civilization from the Bronze Age to the Greco-Persian wars. Throughout, the author provides fresh insight into the "Greek miracle," as he illuminates the well-known features of Greek culture--from epic and lyric poetry to warfare, athletics, philosophy, religion, and democracy. What made these achievements possible and so enduring? Meier argues that across the whole range of human experience--in politics and philosophy no less than in war,
sport, and religion--there was one common denominator among the ancient Greeks: an attempt to find compromise, balance, and understanding in the face of problems others usually solved by means of power. A Culture of Freedom is an original and learned portrait of a civilization that still captivates and inspires.

A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

Table of Contents

Foreword by Kurt RaaflaubList of MapsList of FiguresPART I. The Question of Beginnings1. A Most Unusual Case I: The Appropriation of Antiquity by Medieval and Modern Europe2. The Challenge of Freedom 3. A Most Unusual Case II: The Early Conditions of the Formation of Medieval and Early Modern Culture4. The Constitution of Europe as a Continent 5. Greeks and Persians I: Freedom and Rule-Atossa's Dream 6. Europe and Asia in Antiquity 7. Antiquity as European Prehistory or Early History

PART II. The Rise of the World of Poleis 8. A Post-Mycenaean New Beginning: Origins of Greek Particularity 9. The Dawn of an Era: The Eighth Century BC 10. The Greeks and the Orient 11. Colonization
12. Homer and Hesiod 13. Gods and Priests 14. Crisis and Consolidation: The Seventh and Sixth Centuries BC 15. Polis Individualism and the Pan-Hellenic Context: The Agonistic Impulse16. The Diversity of the Poleis: Sparta and Other Cities 17. The Wars 18 Polis Structure: Public Sphere and Institutions 19. Crisis: Aristocratic Rivalries, Social Conflict, Tyrannies 20. Lyric Poetry, the Symposium, and a Reorientation towards Virtue 21. The Beginnings of Political Thought: The 'Middling Class' 22. The Beginnings of Philosophy and Science 23. Athens's Path towards Isonomia and its Rise to Power 24. The Aegean World around 500 bc: Greeks and Persians Outlook Epilogue GlossarySources and Further
Reading Index

A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

Author Information

Christian Meier, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Munich, is the author of Caesar: A Biography, Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age, and From Athens to Auschwitz: The Uses of History.

A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

Reviews and Awards

"Christian Meier is one of the most celebrated ancient historians writing today."--Times Higher Education Supplement

The book consists of two major parts. The first one explores the origins of the concept of Europe. Meier shows how modern western civilization is both based on and separate from that of Greco-Roman antiquity.... Part 2... covers the development of Greek civilization from the collapse of the Mycenaean state-system around 1200 BCE down to the wars against the Persians in the early fifth century BCE.... Meier is probably the single most distinguished ancient historian in Germany.... This is a beautifully written book that manages to meld different aspects of Greek history and civilization into a coherent narrative. The main strength is the seemingly effortless fusion of political, cultural, and social history....The volume addresses a general audience with no prior knowledge
of Greek history but is so well-crafted and insightful that it should also be of interest to students and academics.--Walter Scheidel, Professor of Classics, Stanford University

"Meier reminds us of the huge debt that Europe owes to the Greeks - a painfully ironic message at a time when modern Greece, unable to pay its debts, contemplates an exit from the European Union"--The Wall Street Journal

"A wide-sweeping argument that locates an essential aspect of European culture in the distinctiveness of ancient Greece from the other large empires found both before and after it." --Philosophy in Review

A Culture of Freedom

Ancient Greece and the Origins of Europe

Christian Meier
Foreword by Kurt Raaflaub

From Our Blog

By Christian Meier
Hesiod and Homer brought order to the world of the gods for the Greeks, describing their genealogical connections, allocating honours, powers, and areas of responsibility among them, and giving them distinct appearances. This is how Herodotus put it.